Results of such research should reveal physiological mechanisms of resilience that could be used to develop interventions that would prevent or cure a variety of heart, lung, blood, and sleep diseases.

Feasibility and challenges of addressing this CQ or CC:

Advances in omics, clinical testing

, accumulation of large sets of clinical data and samples

, big data tools

, and increased interest from public (normal volunteers) and patients to participate in large scientific experiments make it feasible.

For instance, these may be healthy people carrying genetic mutations strongly associated with HLBS diseases (or causing rare/familial genetic diseases – these might easier to focus on first), but also people who are not hypertensive, hypercholesterolemic, or diabetic in spite of consistently making bad dietary choices, people who did not develop lung conditions in spite of high pollutant exposure, or are otherwise “protected” from other heart, lung, blood and sleep diseases. This reasoning is not very different from that used to identify ApoA Milano, or even PCSK9 or the “longevity genes”. Such information should reveal physiological mechanisms that could be leveraged to develop interventions to prevent or cure HLBS diseases.

Name of idea submitter and other team members who worked on this idea:
NHLBI Staff

Voting

What is the measureable normal human variation at the -omic, cellular, organ, and system levels within the population and across the lifespan?
• What are the range of normal human cellular functions that create resilience at all levels—cells, organs, organ systems?
• What inter-organ, tissue, and cellular communications maintain individual health and the health of populations?
• How do we understand why individuals with
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Addressing this line of research could define biomarkers and pathways useful for prediction of how human response to an external stimulus of varied nature (i.e. microorganism, chemical, physical) could lead to specific outcomes in relationship to the duration of the exposure and the genetic makeup of the individual exposed. Identification of early signals and the pathways involved could lead to novel preventative or therapeutic approaches.

Feasibility and challenges of addressing this CQ or CC:

Methods for systems biology approaches to address complex pathobiological iterations are ready to be exploited to answer these questions.

Great progress has been made in the clarification of basic mechanisms of molecular and cellular response to environmental stimuli, in cross-sectional analyses. The continuum of the response in relationship to the genetic background of individuals responding with a homeostatic or pathological long-term outcome is missing from these data.

Name of idea submitter and other team members who worked on this idea:
NHLBI Staff

To extend our knowledge of the pathobiology of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders and enable clinical investigations that advance the prediction, prevention, preemption, treatment, and cures of human disease.